URBANA – The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts has announced its 2024-2025 performance season featuring international, national, and local acts, as well as University of Illinois student musicals, plays, and other productions. Morning Edition host, Kimberly Schofield, spoke with Julianne Ehre, KCPA’s Assistant Director for Programming and Engagement, about what audiences can expect to see, hear and interact with this season.
Schofield: Julianne, thank you so much for joining me. Are there any events that you are particularly extra excited about coming this season?
Ehre: Oh gosh, it’s really hard to choose. I mean, what’s so great about Krannert Center is we have so many events that reach out to so many different kinds of people. So I’ll try to just highlight a few, but I’m excited about so many of them. First of all, everyone should know that our opening night party on September 6th is totally free and open to everybody, so it’s a great opportunity to come on by and get a taste of Krannert. We have a really popular reggae band, SOJA, several hip-hop and footwork dance companies coming from all around the country.
Ladies of Hip-Hop from New York City, Versa-Style Street Dance Company from Los Angeles, and the Era Footwork Crew are going to be here from Chicago, and also just other fabulous artists that are super innovative for opening. And that actually goes all the way through Saturday. We have a lot of family programming on the Saturday.
Internationally acclaimed artist LaTasha Barnes has created a show called The Jazz Continuum, which is really like a whole history of Black social dance. I saw it in Chicago. The audience literally rushed the stage at the end, and all got up and had a big dance party. It is such a fun, joyous show and that is the following weekend, September 14th.
We have jazz luminaries coming throughout the season, Terrence Blanchard, Charles Lloyd. There was just a huge piece in The New York Times about an artist, Meshell Ndegeocello, and she’s going to be here in January.
We’re continuing our partnership with Illinois Soul, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, local groups. It’s the 10th year of the CU Jazz Fest, and opera greats like Renee Fleming will be here.
Second City from Chicago. I mean, I could just go on and on, depending what you’re excited about. There’s also some really fun theater artists from New York City coming in. Sister Sylvester is a younger theater artist whose work I’ve seen a couple times in New York. She’s bringing in a show called Drinking Brecht, the German playwright. She created this whole interactive show where, supposedly, we all drink DNA-infused cocktails from Brecht’s DNA.
And then another show that we’re bringing in from New York is Food by Geoff Sobelle. He was last here with a piece called Home, and this is kind of a trilogy of his work, but you don’t have to have seen the other ones to enjoy Food.
Schofield: What is it like to have so many acts from around the world coming to central Illinois? There are local acts, of course, with students and local musicians and performers. There are international musicians, there are playwrights. I see Taylor Mac is coming. Years ago, I assistant directed a community theater work of Taylor Mac’s play, Hir, so I got really excited when I saw that Taylor Mac is coming. How do you feel when you see all these big names coming to the theater…or even some smaller names or lesser known names…but have a response from the community?
Ehre: I feel blown away, honestly, and I feel so fortunate to be able to be a part of a team that can bring these artists to the Krannert Center. And it’s such an opportunity for central Illinois audiences, for our community, for our campus, to come and see these artists right in their own backyard. I really kind of want to get out there on one of those cars with a megaphone on top and just announce to everyone that some of these folks are coming to Krannert. I mean, Taylor Mac is a great example…an artist with an international reputation right here at the Krannert Center in Urbana. It’s such a great opportunity for everyone in our area to not have to travel to places like London, New York, Los Angeles, or even drive up to Chicago. It’s all happening right here.
Schofield: You had mentioned Renee Fleming earlier. My news director and I talked a little bit about her because we were pretty excited, you know, with her Broadway and her opera, of course, and she’s the only classically trained opera singer who has performed a national anthem at a Super Bowl.
Ehre: Oh, wow. I did not know that about her.
Schofield: That’s what I love about the arts. There are so many little things that some people know and then it’s all in one place and you get to learn a lot from people, especially because Krannert offers talkbacks or discussions with the artists. There’s a lot of engagement that you all offer between the performances, or the performers and the community.
Ehre: You know, there’s so much engagement. I actually work both in programming and engagement and I think a lot of people don’t even know all the things that Krannert Center is doing in the community.
For example, Ladies of Hip-Hop is going to be working with teenage girls over at Centennial High School. While they’re here, they’re also doing a workshop, a master class for University of Illinois students. Versa-Style Dance Company, same thing. They are going to be at the Ready School and also working with U of I students. LaTasha Barnes is doing several events. There’s going to be a community hang that everyone is welcome to come to where they can meet all the artists from the Jazz Continuum – that’s Tuesday, September 10, at eight o’clock, right after a BIPOC artist resource fair that we’re hosting. So those are just a few examples of how we go into public schools. LaTasha Barnes is also doing an event for veterans. She herself is an Army veteran, and she wanted to work specifically with that population while she’s here. So yeah, we have various discussions happening, as well as workshops for students. There’s so many different ways that we impact the community beyond our performances.